US lawmakers push DOJ to investigate Apple following Beeper shutdowns

Following a tumultuous few weeks for Beeper, which has been trying to provide an iMessage-compatible Android app, a group of US lawmakers are pushing for the DOJ to investigate Apple for “potentially anticompetitive conduct” over its attempts to disable Beeper’s services. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) as well as Representatives Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Ken Buck (R-CO) said in a letter to the DOJ that Beeper Mini was a threat to Apple’s leverage by “creating [a] more competitive mobile applications market, which in turn [creates] a more competitive mobile device market.”

In an interview with CBS News on Monday, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky and 16-year-old developer James Gill talked about the fight to keep Beeper Mini alive. Migicovsky told CBS News that Beeper is trying to provide a service people want and reiterated his belief that Apple has a monopoly over its iMessage service. The company created Beeper Mini after being contacted by Gill, who said he reverse engineered the software by “poking at it” using a “real Mac and a real iPhone.”

“When James first sent me a message on Discord, I was blown away,” Migicovsky said, “Because we’d been working on this for three years.”

The lawmakers’ letter also pointed to a Department of Commerce report calling Apple a “gatekeeper,” mirroring language used in the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) that went into force earlier this year, regulating the “core” services of several tech platforms (though, notably, iMessage may not be included in this). They went on to cite Migicovsky’s December 2021 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that “the dominant messaging services would use their position to impose barriers to interoperability” and keep companies like Beeper from offering certain services. “Given Apple’s recent actions, that concern appears prescient,” they added.

Ever since Beeper Mini rolled out on December 5th — an app that allows users to send blue bubble encrypted iMessages directly from their Android devices — Beeper has been fighting off Apple’s attempts to shut down the app and its older server relay iMessage solution, Beeper Cloud. Outages have impacted both Beeper Cloud and Beeper Mini since December 8th, with Beeper confirming on December 13th that Apple was “deliberately blocking” iMessages from being delivered to about 5 percent of Beeper Mini users. 

In a statement acknowledging the shutdown, Apple senior PR manager Nadine Haija said that Apple “took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.” Beeper has attempted to restore its services several times over the last week. As of December 17th, Migicovsky said in a message on Beeper Cloud that over 60 percent of Beeper users are currently unable to send or receive iMessages.